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Wednesday, October 29, 2014

Our D-Day Fallen: Sergeant Earl L. Parker

As we move toward the holiday season, we take time to remember all our servicemen and women around the world. At the National D-Day Memorial, we have a special holiday time season program to honor all those who never made it home. We remember all the sacrifices our servicemen and women make everyday, and the sacrifices made by their families. Join us for our special nighttime presentation from December 12-14, 2014 entitled Flames of Memory, where4,413 luminaries around the site are lit in memory of the Allied forces who were killed in action on June 6, 1944 - men like that of Bedford Boy Sergeant Earl Parker.

Growing up on a 300-acre beef farm, Earl
Parker began working at the Piedmont Label Company, which printed labels for
canned foods, after graduating from Bedford High School. He was one of three
brothers – all of whom would experience combat during the war.Younger brother Billy recalled that Earl
enjoyed playing baseball and hunting.

In 1939, twenty-six-year-old Parker was
a private first class in Company A.Parker was a lighthearted young man who was madly in love with
nineteen-year-old Viola Shrader, one of the prettiest and most popular girls in
all of Bedford. The two were married in 1940 and shortly after Earl left their
daughter, Danny, was born.

Like other wives, Viola did what she
could to remain positive while her husband was away.To his end, Parker did everything he could to
get back home to visit his bride.Anytime he would have leave, he would try to carpool with anyone headed
home. Viola wrote to her husband all the time.She tried to stress the positives, even though life without Earl was
getting tougher every day.

Like many women, Viola moved back to her
parents’ home with her baby. By day, she worked on her family farm and at
night, she slept in her childhood room and fell asleep listening to the nightly
radio news shows.

At the beginning of the invasion, the
Javelin moved out in to the Channel and Roy and Ray Stevens stood at the rail
with Earl Parker. Parker took the photo of his daughter Danny out of his pocket
and said, “If I could see her just once, I wouldn't mind dying.”

In mid-July, Viola received one of the
first Western Union telegrams to be delivered of the Company A fatalities from
June 6, 1944. It confirmed her worst fears, Earl was missing in action. She
recalled, “You’re so hit that you don’t cry, you don’t do anything. I thought,
‘Well I better dust.’…I dusted the whole house.”Afterwards, Viola took Danny in her arms,
left the house, and walked towards the Peaks of Otter—the same place where she
and Earl had courted.There she wondered
what she was going to do now that her love was gone, but she also told Danny
“we’re going to make it.”

After the war and the men returned home,
Viola went on search for answers.Eventually, she visited Ray Nance telling him to tell her what happened
because she did not believe he was dead.Nance told her that Parker had been hit by a mortar shell and his body
had been washed out to the English Channel, never to be recovered. She was
comforted in knowing that Earl had died instantly without pain. The one thing
that Viola had was her daughter, the greatest of parting gifts. Viola said,
“She was an inspiration to go out and do something instead of sitting around
crying all day.”

In 1954, Danny, eleven-years-old,
unveiled a tribute to the Bedford Boys that sits at the old Bedford High
School, today’s middle school. She knew the story of her local National Guard
Company and knew that her daddy was a part of the largest amphibious invasion
to take place in history, the invasion that allowed the Allies to start moving
across Europe to end the war in May 1945.

**If you would like to learn more about Flames of Memory or make a donation to honor/remember a serviceman or woman, please click here. Help us ensure everyone is remembered this holiday season.

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The National D-Day Memorialis run by a private, non-profit educational foundation in Bedford, Virginia that seeks to preserve the lessons and legacy of D-Day, June 6, 1944.

Meet Maggie

About Me

I work as the Education Coordinator for the National D-Day Memorial planning a variety of family-friendly programs for students of all ages. It is my passion to present history in a way that is fun and engaging.